One example of a vehicle of this type is the MacDon 9000 tractor which can carry the MacDon 625 Field sprayer mounted on the tractor which is commercially available and details are available from a brochure published by Westward Parts. Further details are shown in U.S. patent applications Ser. Nos. 08/904,148 and 09/020,855 filed Jul. 21 1997 and Feb. 9, 1998 the details of which are incorporated herein by reference. The corresponding Canadian Applications are 2,212,220 and 2,229,152.
The crop divider can also be used with other types of vehicles which are of the type used as a dedicated sprayer, for example the products available from John Deere, Willmar and Tyler, where a wheel must pass over standing crop to carry the sprayer and boom over the ground to effect a spraying action on the crop.
Many different designs of dividers have previously been used for dividing crop. They commonly depend on steel or plastic sheets (or bars) mounted on an angle to the direction of travel and diverging from a leading edge to push standing crop to the side. An example of this type is shown in the John Deere 4700 brochure on page 19.
These types of device are not effective on crop that is leaning substantially out of vertical or crop that is down and tangled. In addition, at higher speed the divider tends to push standing crop forward and down to a position where it is simply run over by the wheel. The disadvantages of these types of current dividers are sufficient that they are frequently not used even though 2 to 3% of the crop is typically run over and not harvested. This is a substantial loss that may be significantly reduced if an effective crop divider can be provided.